Delphi complete works of.., p.145
Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 145
At this juncture an interne presented himself and gave them what proved to be a sleeping potion, for presently their eyes closed and they fell into an uneasy doze.
Several hours later Mr. Burdock awoke and immediately wished he hadn’t. What he saw caused him to shrink within his bonds. He hoped he was still dreaming. He even hoped that the doctor had been right and that he had gone mad. He hoped for any other explanation except the true one. An incredibly aged creature or thing, a face remotely suggestive of a woman, an evil face framed in an unholy nimbus of straggling, gray hair, was peering down into his, peering with the glazed, fixed stare of the demented. In the hand of this apparition was a long kitchen knife. Just above Mr. Burdock’s throat the blade was suggestively poised.
“Get up, Jim,” croaked the face in a hoarse voice. “Get up at once. It’s time ye were rising, man.”
Mr. Burdock licked his dry lips and endeavored to speak. No sound came.
“Get up,” continued the terrible voice. “Get up, Jim, you hulk of a man.”
“My good woman,” Tom Burdock gasped. “Nothing would please me more. I long to get up. I’d give ten years of my life to get up, but unfortunately I can’t get up.”
“I’ll make you get up,” grated the old woman, tentatively pricking her victim with the point of the knife.
“But, madam, I’m not Jim,” Mr. Burdock protested. “You’ve made some mistake. I think that man over there calls himself Jim.”
“Oh, what a lie!” exclaimed Sally, who had been awakened by the sound of voices. “Don’t you believe him, lady. Jim went out to get a drink.”
“I’d like a drink,” observed the old woman.
“Why don’t you go and get one?” suggested Mr. Burdock. “We all want a drink.”
“No,” said the old woman, once more prodding Burdock with the knife. “You go get the drink.”
“Listen, lady,” he said very earnestly. “If I could go get a drink you don’t think I’d be lying here, do you? I couldn’t go get a drink if they were being given away in buckets. I can’t even budge.”
“I’ll make you budge,” proclaimed the old lady, growing excited. “Are you going to get that drink before I slit your throat?”
As she prodded the knife into Mr. Burdock her face was working horribly. Unable to stand the situation any longer, he lifted up his voice in one anguished cry for help.
“Pipe down in there,” called a gruff voice. “Want another cold bath?”
“Yes,” shouted Burdock. “That’s it. I want another cold bath. Quick, for God’s sake.”
“If you don’t hurry he’ll be bathed in blood,” Sally sang out. “We’ve got a wild woman in here. And she’s got the cutest knife — about twelve inches long.”
“Come out of there, Maggie,” came a bored voice. “Neither one of those guys is your husband. They’re just plain bums. Come on and give us that knife and I’ll slip you a little drink.”
“That’s a good girl, Maggie,” said Mr. Burdock. “Did you hear what he said? He promised you a little drink. Think of that!”
Evidently Maggie was thinking of that. She seemed undecided. From the knife she looked to Mr. Burdock’s unprotected throat. Maybe she could cut it and get the drink, too. A greedy look sprang up in her eyes.
“No, no,” said Sally, who had been watching the old woman closely. “No cheating, Maggie. I’ll tell.”
Mumbling furiously to herself, Maggie turned and hobbled from the alcove.
“Who in God’s name can that be?” asked Tom Burdock, the sweat standing out on his face.
“She seems to be the mascot of the troop,” observed Sally.
“Well, she certainly gave me the worst fifteen minutes of my life,” said Mr. Burdock. “This has been a most unpleasant night. Wish I could go home.”
“Do you mean that?” cried Sally.
“If I ever get out of this place alive,” replied Burdock with deadly conviction, “that’s just where I’m going — home.”
“Is that a promise?” asked Sally.
“It’s more than a promise,” said Burdock. “It’s a grim determination.”
Sally sighed deeply and let her head sink back to rest.
An orderly appeared and stood at the foot of Mr. Burdock’s bed. He was grinning rather apologetically.
“Maggie wasn’t premeditated,” he said. “We didn’t plan Maggie. It was all her own idea.”
“She’s got some mean ideas, that girl,” commented Sally. “Why don’t you keep her locked up?”
“Oh, Maggie’s perfectly harmless,” replied the orderly. “We’ve had her with us for years. She’s a sort of privileged character. She wanders from ward to ward. Nobody seems to mind.”
“I mind terribly,” said Mr. Burdock. “I most strenuously object to Maggie. She may be a privileged character, but not with my neck.”
At an early hour they were unstrapped and fed. Then Tom Burdock was given a heavy flat weight attached to a broom handle, and told to push it up and down the linoleum which ran the entire length of the ward.
“My God,” protested Burdock. “This hall is so damned long I don’t even see the end of it. I’ll drop from sheer exhaustion before I’m halfway through.”
“Better send Maggie along with him to keep him from getting lost,” suggested Sally.
Without further protest the employer of five thousand souls set off on his long trip. Sally was set to work emptying buckets, a most uncongenial task. Whenever their paths chanced to cross in the course of their humiliating occupations the two friends’ expressions were eloquent. They were weary, strained, and disgusted. Sally looked especially wan.
“Would you believe it?” demanded Mr. Burdock. “Me with this damn thing. Pushing it. And in such a get-up.”
“I suppose I look quite natural,” remarked Sally bitterly.
“You have all your life before you,” replied Tom Burdock.
“And a sweet little bit behind,” retorted Sally. “You’ve made history for me, Tom Burdock.”
By ten o’clock in the morning both of them were convinced that they had been up an entire day. An attendant flung two bags at them and told them to clear out. Neither one of them ever achieved again such speed in dressing as they did that morning. Even then the operation seemed interminable to them. Both were knotting their neckties as they marched down the hall. Once in the open air they breathed with voluptuous enjoyment. Never had life seemed quite so desirable. A taxi took them to the Grand Central. Sally was taking no chances.
“I’ll fix it up with the hotel,” she assured Mr. Burdock. “I’ll pack your bags myself and see that they’re sent along.”
“You’re a great little scout, Willows,” said the large man. “What a time we’ve had, eh?”
“I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” Sally replied with a grin. “Every jolly old minute. Wouldn’t have missed one of them.”
“The same here, you liar,” said Mr. Burdock. “We’ve had a nice, quiet time. Going to tell my wife all about it.”
They were standing on the long platform now and Sally was watching Tom Burdock with anxious eyes. A white-jacketed porter stepped out of a Pullman and greeted Mr. Burdock with a dazzling display of even whiter teeth. Mr. Burdock returned the salutation in his large, friendly style. Evidently he was well known on this line. Sally had no desire to linger over the farewells. She wanted to see her charge disappear into the train and the doors shut against his return.
“Don’t forget America’s Sweetheart,” she told him.
“You mean Maggie?” asked Burdock, with a slight shudder.
“Herself,” replied Sally.
“Never,” said Mr. Burdock. “I’m going in now and collapse in a chair. Do I look all right?”
“Surprisingly well, considering what you’ve been through.”
So departed Mr. Burdock from the city that had so disastrously misunderstood his playful intentions. Sally stood on the platform until the train pulled out, then she hurried to the nearest telephone and made a full report to a congratulatory Mr. Gibber. An hour later she caught a local to Cliffside, hoping there to enjoy a much-needed rest. She never did. Not on this occasion, at any rate.
The excitement started when she was wearily crossing Springfield Avenue on her way home from the station. Speaking accurately, the excitement must have started elsewhere. It merely reached its highest point of activity in and around the spot where Sally was standing. It was first brought to her attention by a bitter fusillade of bullets and the sharp reports of an exceedingly loquacious revolver. As inured as she had become to the unexpected, Sally was nevertheless somewhat disturbed. She was more so when she saw Mr. Carl Bentley, clad in a dripping wet union suit, approaching her at great speed. Close behind Mr. Bentley, and covering ground much too rapidly for a prospective mother, came the metamorphosed Tim, diligently pumping an old service automatic. And close behind Tim were two leaping state troopers, their faces eloquently expressing incredulity and determination. It must have been a moment of supreme humiliation for Mr. Bentley, but the Don Juan of the suburbs seemed to have tossed all considerations of shame and modesty to the winds as being impediments to flight.
Catching sight of a person he erroneously believed to be the husband of his murderously inclined pursuer, Mr. Bentley crouched behind Sally and pleaded for protection.
“A terrible mistake,” he managed to get out between gasping breaths. “She suddenly went mad. Speak to her, Mr. Willows. I’m too young to die.”
This settled Mr. Bentley’s hash forever with Sally.
“You were never too young to die,” she told the cringing man. “You should never have been allowed to get as far along as you have.”
Tim, held firmly by the two state troopers and talking loosely about his purely hypothetical honor, was hustled up to the spot.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Willows,” said one of the troopers to Sally, “I’ll have to ask you to accompany your wife and this — this — —” The trooper seemed to be having difficulty in classifying Carl Bentley. Tim helped him out.
“Nasty-minded craven,” he supplied, then added several unladylike epithets.
“Madam!” said the trooper reprovingly.
“To hell with you,” snapped Tim. “If the two of you hadn’t butted in this bum would have been a corpse by now.”
“May I ask what all the shooting’s about?” Sally put in mildly.
“That’s what we want to know,” said the other trooper. “Come on down to the police station and we’ll try to find out.”
“If you want to know,” remarked Tim, “it’s all about this damned honor of mine.”
He slipped an arm through Sally’s and winked wickedly up at her. Sally was undecided whether she would prefer to lose her honor privately or her reputation in public. Ahead of them, held with unnecessary brutality, Carl Bentley in his dripping union suit proceeded down the street.
In, virtually, any part of the civilized world this little procession would have occasioned comment. In Cliffside it did more than that. Even to this day it is a subject of conversation that increases in dramatic intensity with the passing of the years. Carl Bentley’s dripping union suit is still as fresh in the memory of those who had been privileged to witness the incident as when that unfortunate gentleman had first sprinted grotesquely down Springfield Avenue.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Baiting of Mr. Bentley
MR. RAM SHOULD never have done the thing he did. But, then, one never can tell about Egyptians. Especially with old Egyptians. With new Egyptians it’s different. Nobody knows just what a new Egyptian is. One can’t very well dig up a new Egyptian. Old Egyptians are much easier to get to know. They seem to have had a quaint idea of humor. Like Mr. Ram.
There was no sense in giving Tim Willows the body of a woman and leaving him the mind of a man. It was a flagrant example of perverted sorcery, and just what one would expect from an old Egyptian, an old and cynical Egyptian deeply steeped in all the more exasperating phases of the black arts.
One may say that in the case of Mr. Ram there were extenuating circumstances. Perhaps there were. No one enjoys less than an old Egyptian being forced to listen to the constant bickerings of a married couple. An occasional row is diverting, but a daily diet of recrimination and vain regrets wears on one’s nerves and saps one’s moral fibre. Even at that Mr. Ram might have tried something a little less drastic. For example, he could easily have made Sally dumb and Tim deaf or vice versa. It would not have mattered much just how he went about it. But, seemingly, Mr. Ram did not choose to act reasonably in the matter. Probably he decided that the only way to get these two unreasonable persons to understand him was to be thoroughly unreasonable himself. Either that or he suddenly lost his temper after long years of provocation, and did the first thing that popped into his head. He might have figured it out this way: Give people what they ask for and then wait and see what they make of it. Both Tim and Sally had made a mess of it. But Tim had made a bigger mess of it than Sally. Perhaps a woman is more adaptable than a man. She must be if there is any truth in the rumor that from a mere rib — an unsightly object at best — she developed into the complicated creature of curves and nerves she represents to-day. You would never catch a man allowing a thing like that being done to him. If the process had been reversed and the rib extracted from Eve’s side, that rib would have hemmed and hawed and argued and compromised until there was not a bone left in the poor woman’s body. Men are like that. They have a fine sense of dignity. No real man would be willing to run the risk of having his wife turn on him suddenly and cry: “Shut up, you mere rib.” A man would not stand for that, but a woman would. A woman will stand for anything so long as she gets the best of the man. Eve did not care a snap of her fig leaf about being Adam’s rib, whereas Adam would have put up an awful howl had the tables been turned or the ribs reversed. Eve knew perfectly well that as soon as she got working properly, that is, as soon as she had developed her curves and acquired her nerves Adam would forget all about the rib part of it and try to get familiar. Men are even more like that. In a paroxysm of nervous hysteria she forced the apple on Adam, saying he never liked anything she picked, then with a skillful use of her curves she got the best of him as she had all along known she would even when a mere rib. And that must have been about the way of it. Adam never had a chance. Neither had Tim Willows. Nor Carl Bentley, for that matter. Certainly the latter had no chance at all when he was so ill-advised as to call on one he mistakenly supposed to be the delectable Sally Willows on the same day when that young lady in her husband’s aching body was seeing the last of Tom Burdock.
Tim, thoroughly convinced that his condition justified a little self-indulgence, was lolling in bed with his morning paper and a cigar when Mr. Bentley, like the astute snake in the grass he was, telephoned to ascertain if the coast was clear. Tim answered the call in Sally’s most affected voice.
“Hello. Who’s speaking?” he asked.
“Sally, is that you?” came the low inquiry.
Tim’s face darkened, but his tones remained just as dulcet. He had recognized Mr. Bentley’s hateful voice.
“Oh, dear,” he said vibrantly, emitting the while a cloud of pungent cigar smoke. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you.”
At the other end of the wire Mr. Bentley was beginning to feel better and better. He liked to keep his women feeling that way.
“You said it, baby,” he replied, in that whimsically slangy way of his that proved so effective with women. “Is it all right for me to come round now?”
“But Carl, dear,” protested Tim, smiling grimly, “baby’s still in bed.”
“Then I’ll hurry right over,” said Bentley. “Don’t trouble to get up for me.”
“What a man!” exclaimed Tim coyly as he viciously jabbed the receiver down on its hook. “I’ll make him pay for this,” he continued to himself as he sprang from the bed. “By God, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born a man. One of these birds who refuses to learn a lesson. All right, I’ll teach him. Thinks I’m at work, does he? Ha! I’ll make him sweat.”
Opening a bureau drawer he examined his automatic to see if it was properly loaded, then, dressing rapidly, he deluged himself with perfume and hurried downstairs.
When Carl Bentley arrived a few minutes later and found his prey already up and dressed, his face eloquently expressed his disappointment.
“You needn’t have gone to all that trouble for me,” he said. “I’ve often been received by ladies in bed.”
“Especially when their husbands are safely out of the way at their stupid old offices,” put in Tim with a wicked smile.
Mr. Bentley smiled back fatuously and approached Tim with carnal intent.
“I took a day off from my office just for this opportunity,” he said in a low voice. “Are you going to make it worth while, Sally?”
“What do you think?” asked Tim teasingly, then added to himself, “You low-lived louse, you’ll get more than you ever expected in your wildest dreams.”
As Bentley’s eager arms enfolded him, Tim managed to lock one foot back of that gentleman’s heel, then, as if in a frenzy of passion, he hurled himself suddenly against the opposing chest and let gravity claim its own. It did. Carl Bentley went down with a crash, landing painfully on the sharp edge of a footstool. At the same moment Dopey lumbered in from the kitchen and, seeing a man in an apparently helpless condition, immediately attacked him. Bentley emitted feeble cries of fear and suffering as Tim clumsily strove to disengage the gallant dog’s teeth from the prostrate man’s trousers. Eventually Tim succeeded, but not without leaving a nice big V-shaped rip. Everything was going splendidly. Tim had not counted on the collaboration of Dopey. He appreciated the dog’s intervention. Kneeling down by the writhing figure he proceeded to scold it playfully for being so easily thrown off its balance. Carl Bentley’s vanity was challenged. He rose weakly from the floor and hobbled over to a chair, into which he tenderly eased his injured torso.
